Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

So I was able to harden the seedlings successfully! Normally that’s when I kill things. Generally I forget about them and then they die from over exposure. This time I was meticulous about how much time they were out each day and brought them in properly. The only thing that happened was a little sunburn from starting in a place that was too sunny.

Note to self: Start hardening in a place that only gets a few hours of sunlight per day. The plants get plenty of indirect sunlight even if they are never in direct sunlight.

I have started transplanting them into the vegetable garden today!

I have transplanted the broccoli, and the tomato plants (roma and beefstake). I probably have about 20 volunteer tomato plants out there as well!!! I will wait until they are a bit larger and then thin them out and see what plants came back from the dead tomatoes that were on the ground.

So tomorrow and Saturday I plan to transplant the carrots, peppers, onions and petunias.

Thanks for stopping! ~ Sara

The house finches have laid 4 eggs and they are just the smallest little fragile things!!! I can’t wait to hear the little chirps of the babies in about a week or so. It takes about 14 days for an egg to hatch. They’ve been there for over a week so I am thinking it could be any time now.

Sadly the baby robin did not survive. Momma robins leave the nest during the day to get food and I am afraid that is when we had that nasty cold snap. It was only about 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and almost to freezing over night. Hopefully she still has time to have another clutch of eggs before winter.

I will take pictures and keep you all posted about the house finches. 🙂

I planted some strawberry plants a few years ago and all we ever got was one single strawberry from them. NOW they are very happy and producing many berries! They are so delicious. Store-bought strawberries are NOTHING compared to the flavor you get from growing your own.

I have them in the center of my vegetable garden (along with the other animal favorite, broccoli) to try to keep them away from other mammals who may want some. I also put bird netting up just in time! We harvested 3 berries yesterday and they were so very good.

I can’t wait to get more off these plants. I wonder if they will keep producing all season. That would be awesome.

I might actually have to get some more of these plants if they are going to be so tasty and so happy and easy to keep.

Thanks for stopping ~ Sara

My indoor tomatoes have fruit on them!

I had to pollinate them myself when they had blossoms. I have never done this before but I must have done it right because the tomatoes came. 🙂 I did it with a spoon so I could catch the pollen and redistribute it to the other blossoms without dropping it.

I have three tomatoes and as soon as these babies can be eaten I am going to take pictures, eat them, and then get rid of these HUGE monster tomato plants.I think they would be up to about 5 feet tall if they weren’t falling all over themselves.

(I learned the hard way that the smaller the tomato the taller/larger the plant, most of the time.)

I will keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping by ~ Sara

I harvested the first of the radishes the other day!

They were pretty small, but the rows needed thinning anyway. They were VERY tasty. Not as spicy as I would like, but at least my daughter can have some then too.

The type of radish I got was a “Cherry Belle” They are a solid bright red and smaller variety. I left them in the garden 2 weeks longer than the 22 days to harvest and even now the vast majority are not ready to harvest yet.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara

The House Finches that have nested in my entry way hanging basket for the past 4 years are BACK!

I had seen the nest pop up virtually over night because we had some cold weather and I was bringing the basket in the garage over night so it wouldn’t freeze. I went to move it one night and the nest was just there! I didn’t know who had created it though. No eggs we in the nest yet. So I had to leave it out and hope the Fuchsia in it wouldn’t freeze.

Now there are eggs. I don’t know how many because I haven’t seen them personally, but the momma is in there constantly so she must be sitting on her eggs. 🙂 The birds are very skiddish right now but eventually the get the idea that we are not going to hurt them and they stick around the nest even if we are outside.

I had the hanging basket for about a week before the nest was there. The first time it happened we had gotten a May Day basket from my husband’s grandma and that’s what they nested in. So I know they like to nest around May 1st, so ever since then I have made sure to have something for them to nest in by May 1st. One year I missed the date and they nested in the Juniper bush in front of the door!!! We couldn’t use the front entrance for a good month because that nest was so out in the open we were afraid they would abandon it if we were too close.

I can’t wait to be hearing little baby bird chirps out my front door! It should take about 14 days or so.

Gotta run, hope to get some pictures up on this bare sight soon!

~Sara

There is just one lonely baby robin out in the nest!

The momma is gone all day presumably getting food and returns at night to her nest and baby.

Will keep you updated and hope to have pictures some time soon.

Hi everyone!

Today I planted the seeds in the outdoor garden. I put in broccoli, carrots, zucchini, cilantro and basil. I bordered the sides with cosmos, and made areas for the small plants of broccoli, onions, bell and jalapeno peppers, and tomatoes to go once they are properly hardened.

I have the baby plants up to 8-10 hours of outside time per day. So I am just bringing them in at night now. When I know that I have a good few days of mild weather I will transplant them. Right now we are expecting a storm tomorrow and one next week. So maybe after the storm next week. I just want them to have a few days of over night weather to get settled. If a storm did come I could just cover them with laundry baskets and boxes.

I will be putting the planting date and the harvest date on the Scheduler-Calendar page as well. All my planting and harvesting dates are listed there. According to the packets I should be able to start harvesting most of the garden in mid-July.

Thanks for stopping by!!

~Sara

We now have 2 bird nests on our property!

One is the robin nest that is in a bush that borders the garage, and we have a new nest with no eggs yet in the hanging basket. I have yet to see who is in this new nest but it has been the choice location for a pair of mated house finches for the past 3 years. 🙂 I am curious to see if it’s the same pair. Who ever it is they are too scared right now to stick around when I open the door. The momma robin has finally caught on to the fact that she can stay in her nest safely when we come out. Those babies should be about ready to hatch!

I need to get some pictures up with these posts!!! Sorry about that. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by.

~Sara

Thank you to the bird or rabbit that ate some honey suckle berries and then came to Maddie’s garden! We have had this bush/tree for a few years now and I am going to attempt to train it into a topiary shape this year!

The first year it was going to be a tree = one long stalk/trunk and one sprig of honey suckle at the top. I cut that down to the ground almost. It came back and it brought friends! A little scary at first and I considered pulling it out all together. But honey suckle is such a sweet bush and perfect for a little girl’s garden so I left it.

Each year I prune it aggressively and the next season it comes back fuller. It wants to be very tall so I just cut it down. I think I have enough growth and fullness this year to shape it. In this same garden I have another bush that we call the “monster” bush. It wants to take over the whole garden so we cut it back all the time. And there is a clematis. It is in soil that has not been prepared and used to have several evergreen bushes in it.

I have had the clematis in there for about three years now and it looks like it is finally going to really go!

We call this flower bed Madison Square Garden. She has a lot to contribute about what goes into this garden and always plants an annual border around it which she plants mostly herself and then cares for by watering and weeding herself.

Will post pics later!

Thanks for stopping by!

~Sara